... Listen, boys!" He turned to the two
plainclothesmen, urgent pleading in his voice. "Would you both take your
oath that there was no bag--say a small Gladstone overnight
bag--anywhere in these rooms when you searched them this evening?"
The two detectives glanced at each other, their faces reddening. It was
Harmon, the older of the pair, who swallowed hard before answering:
"We'd been told to look for a man hiding, and for a gun--" Then he
squared his shoulders as if to receive the blame like a man. "Yes, sir!
There was a little black grip on the closet shelf. I went through it
myself, but there wasn't no gun in it. Just a pair of pajamas and a
couple of shirts, one of 'em dirty, some socks and collars and a
shaving-kit--"
Dundee drew a deep breath, and clapped the red-faced detective on the
back in high good humor.
"There simply _had_ to be a bag somewhere!" he laughed.
"This is the way of it, Strawn.... Nita and Sprague rowed last night.
Sprague tried to make it up, but Nita must have been through with him.
Probably told him last night to clear his things out and not come back.
She thought he had done so; probably he did leave before she got up. At
any rate she was so sure he was gone and his things with him that she
and Lydia went to town this morning and left Ralph Hammond here to go
through the place as freely as he liked, making his estimates on the job
of finishing up the other half of this floor.
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